Exactly, the RIAA is going to take this data and use it as PROOF that their legal assautls are working and that P2P piracy is 100% of the reason that sales took a dive to begin with.

I remember a few years ago when the labels were bitching about declining sales and Napster, someone did a study and determined that if even the most ridiculously high estimates of P2P usage were true and counting that every downloaded song as a lost CD sale that P2P only accounted for like 20% of the drop in CD sales since the 90s economy bubble.

In reality it was the economy that caused sales to drop, after all buying CDs is just about the most optional thing and the first thing to go when the.com that was overpaying you ran out of funding.

Now the economy is on the upswing, and surprisingly people are spending more on leisure items like music.

The recording industry cut production by 20%, hacked away all their low-volume artists, yet saw an 11% gain in sales during the HEIGHT of the Napster boom. We never heard an explanation for that. Hmmm.
No one questions the RIAA on these issues.
The big labels cut all their dead weight, low-volume artists, cut production, yet saw an increase in sales? I have a friend that works for a niche label, and he saw the changes coming, and was happy to sign some of these lower-volume artists as it strengthened th

Hasn't the Music industry recorded record profits during the years when it CLAIMED that they lost MILLIONS to illegal downloads? It seems like the rise of p2p has coincided with profit increases for the music industry. I won't say it's a cause and an effect. But it's a drop in a bucket to them. Apple's success shows people are willing to pay, just not the inflated, over-hyped prices of the crap cds the RIAA has been coming out with.

Exactly! And I feel that people downloading music legally or not actually incourages CD sales. I know it does for me at least. While mp3 quality is fine for my Ipod and headphones or listening to at work... or in the car, there is no way I want to listen to them on my stereo at home. So, I download some songs here and there, some through Itunes, some off bands websites, and some throuh P2P. When I find something I like and am interested in... I go out and buy the record. Why? some may ask.... well, I want t

You dont understand how it works. A company is out to make as much money as it can while playing by the rules. The rules protect IP from infringment; When infringment occurs, its considers lost money. It has nothting to do with the fact that they cd sales are at record highs, its has to do with the fact that they could be higher.

Compared to piracy via P2P, Apple is only mildly successful. They are as well not making any money but using it to boost ipod sales.

That is pretty much the entire fallacy of their argument. They are claiming that piracy has cost them millions/billions in potential profits, which is something that they never actually "had" to lose in the first place.

I don't exactly think the world of the recording industry, and it's a good point that there's a huge fallacy in their argument. I don't think it's a very serious one because most people in the financial world probably consider it a loss if they were expecting money and it doesn't com

How much higher would the increase have been had piracy not been a problem? No one can say for sure. But you can't state that file sharing has not had a negative effect as a result of a positive increas in sales.

I think that file sharing leads to greater purchases of music amongst people who have some money. I know that I download music, but if I see stuff I like in a shop, especially if it is on offer, I'll be much more tempted to buy it if I know it is good, because I want the actual product.

It probably also means that tat won't get bought, and maybe greater sales of music are down to there being better music advertised to the consumer. Instead of pop tat, there is a lot more variety of music advertised these da

> How much higher would the increase have been had piracy not been a problem? No one can say for sure.> But you can't state that file sharing has not had a negative effect as a result of a positive increas> in sales.

I'd like to see some evidence of this assertion. I'm very wary of things that seem at face value to be common sense, and I don't see any reason to buy this particular claim. The last album I bought (Brian Wilson's SMiLE) was purchased after I heard a P2P download of Heroes and Villai

You say pirate CD sales have hit a record high... and thus the RIAA should be going after them. Umm. That's the same flawed logic that had the RIAA attacking Napster.

What if it is the Pirate CD sales that are the primary motivator behind the 2.4% increase? Come on guys... be consistent. All methods of piracy can have some beneficial network effects on sales. All methods of piracy can ALSO cause lower sales under different circumstances.

It is, in a word, wrong to deify music swapping online, but demonise pirate CD sales. They're both illegal... the only real difference is that one has a profit motive, and the other doesn't. But the actual level of illegality, under current law, is about equal. It's illogical to praise one and not the other, don't succumb to the same stupidity that is rife within the **AA.

A common refrain from those in support of filesharing is that the network effect ("Hey, this band is really good, listen to this!") that piracy makes cheap and easy can lead to increased sales of legitimate CDs. Thus, the RIAA should support filesharing networks because it is 'free advertising'.

And yet, the same argument can be pointed at the makers of pirate CDs. They are like AOL CDs, a cheap way to try out a band you would not have blown $15 to listen to otherwise

If I buy a pirated CD, I've already exchanged money for goods. There's basically no chance that I'll later buy a legit copy because I already have some physical media. If I download 2 or 3 songs (or an album) by an artist, and find their CD for sale at a reasonable price, I'm more likely to buy it than if I hadn't heard any of their music.

I don't see why two things being equally illegal makes them morally equivalent.

This actually is the only legitimate reason I can see to distinguish the two types of theft. However... what about the person who gives his friends a burnt copy of his CD? Isn't that just as bad as the guy selling bootlegs on the street? I now have a physical copy, why should I go buy it?

What if the guy on the street is selling at cost? Does that make it less bad for the copyright holder? Does it make him morally better? Compare this to the person running an FTP with a ratio... you have to upload 2MB to do

Napster-style piracy is not about money, but simply content. Using it as a metric against sales is probably foolish. There is a different relationship between music-sharers than between sellers/buyers.

However, copyright infringement that involves a sale is an actual threat, because it is competition. In terms of sensible law and a legal strategy for the RIAA, it makes far more sense to go after profit-driven infringment. The average file-sharer is not competition, but a poten

No one has ever stopped you from listening to the music you want to hear, especially in the last 10 years. It's all out there, each and every genre, for you to find, listen to, and enjoy.

I think a lot of people confuse the music business (mainstream radio, CDs, MTV, etc) with music in general (available music, concerts, etc). Sure, there's going to be a lot more emphesis on that which is being sold by the business, but it's not like the rest isn't out there to be found and enjoyed.

I guess you beat people over the head with the same 50 artists, you can eventually convice them to like it. Unless somebody hits the button for the wrong song during the "live" performance, or worse you let them actually "sing" live in front of 70,000 people; then people won't like it. The Orange Bowl halfime show trainwreck even overshadowed the game.

Yeah, so we can get bludgeoned with 50 different artists following a new formula.

I don't need a revolution which ousts a bunch of artists I don't give a rip about for a new set that I don't want either. Replacing Brittney Spears with Wierd Al isn't going to enrich my musical experience. It'll just change the jokes I use to talk about popular music. I need a mechanism to easily find bands like Collide [collide.net], Abney Park [abneypark.com] or Gossamer which are going to be considered junk by many but which I personally think are grea

1) If you think that the RIAA is sitting on its hands and just letting the largescale music pirates get away with ripping them off while only targetting "Susie and grandma" for litigation, you're quite mistaken. They spend quite a bit of money to seek out and take down these largescale pirates. Unfortunately, some Asian countries are more hospitable to the pirates than others, so policing it is a difficult job.

2) It seems to me that the year-long push by the RIAA to associate P2P filesharing with stealing is paying off, though only to the tune of 2% or so. If they can convince enough people that piracy is a crime, then it is guaranteed to boost actual sales of CDs at the expense of filesharing.

People are generally good and are willing to follow the law. The RIAA's push to make people aware of copyright law has finally made some progress, but also consider that music artists have also become generally better lately than they were in say the mid-late 90's. Of course, the increase in sales corresponds more to the anti-piracy push than to the improvement in music quality (Good music can still be pirated as easily as bad music).

Thank you for admitting that I'm a good person. Whew, without your endorsement I don't know what I'd have done. Maybe become a crackwhore or something.

When I download some songs and say to myself, "Hmm, maybe this artist's entire elbum doesn't suck", then go out and buy the ridiculously overpriced CD, I'm not just being a sucker: I'm being a LAW-ABIDING sucker.

I'll sleep so much better now.

Fuck you and your Devil's advocacy.

When consumer-level (read 'us') audio tape became a reality, the **AA trundled out assholes such as Elton John to weep and wring their hands, and claim they'd go broke. Instead they got even richer.

When consumer-level (read 'us') video tape became a reality, the **AA trundled out more assholes to weep and wring their hands, and claim they'd go broke. Instead they got even richer.

Now that digital music is the current reality, and future, they do the same shit, while still getting richer.

They are a pack of irredeemably parasitic scumbags. They cannot be defended or excused. Their time is over, and the sooner the blood-sucking leech whores just curl-up and fucking die, the better.

Unfortunately, some Asian countries are more hospitable to the pirates than others, so policing it is a difficult job.

Most CD stores in China are pirate *only*. In these stores, you can't find a single legal CD. The only stores that sell genuine stuff are the malls, since they need to have a somewhat credible reputation. But even they carry pirated material occasionally.

I don't see how the **AA is going to police this... in the minds of the Chinese, there is no such thing as immaterial rights. Everyt

Hell, if they sold CDs for $5 from normal looking guys in normal stores, I would buy a ton. I'd probably be more inclined to purchase music I was only sort of interested in, and if I didn't like it, then it would be no big loss. But at the price CDs are currently, I can only afford to buy music that I already know and enjoy.

"Little Susy or grandma" might not be the crux of the problem, but "real pirates" are just as likely to be the guy living next door nowdays. They may not be running processing plants like the mob, but I've seen plenty of "village geeks" selling downloaded movies and CDs. At the call center where last I 9-5'd there were several people with fast home connections and DVD burners who regularly sold downloads to other employees on the floor.

This was not just onesy-twosey stuff. Any given week I'm sure one fellow sold 20 or 30 CDs at five bucks a pop. Multiply this by 1000's of businesses across the country and it's easy to see how it can really add up.

What amazes me is people really cannot tell the difference (or don't care) between a real CD and a POS CDR burnded from MP3s. I would be indignant about the pirates SELLING this stuff, but given these people are buying something akin to a cassette tape all you can really say is "it's their money to waste."

The MPAA and RIAA should say, "We know we're suffering some from piracy, but it's bad PR to go after teenagers and bad strategy not to go after large pirates. So here's what we'll do: we won't go after anyone only downloading our materials for their own use. If it's already on the servers, oh well.

"We will, however, go after people who upload the material (willingly or by default [this includes BitTorrent]) or who distribute the material for others, and press criminal charges if they request

Hey AC, I thought it was clear from my comments I don't agfree witht this nonsense either. In factr, much as I hate those hollywood lobbyists, I was offended enough to seriously consider narcing the business to the enforcers.

I believe in FREEDOM of information exchange. I didn't like Napster because it was commercial, I have never supported the commercial p2p networks, and the day MP3.com abandonded their own artists and tried to co-opt madonna they lost my support as well.

With all the lawsuits and crappy content flying around, the only way I can stock my MP3 collection is to buy CDs and then resell them on eBay! That's two sales right there! Or sometimes I just take 'em right back and tell the dweeb with the KoRn T-shirt that they won't play in my Dell. I bet they resell the same CDs 3-4 times! Burn 'n' Return baby!

The added benefit of suing the lil' guys is that they don't have enough money to fight back....but have just enough money to make a settlement worthwhile....especially when they don't have too many middlemen to pony up to.

Either way, they can't say that downloading is really hurting them any more....they are still selling more and more and the fact that they aren't focusing their attention to real pirates...and yet manage a gain in sales..

Those numbers don't look so good if you compare the growth in CD sales to the sales of video (VHS/DVD's) software, or to the economy as a whole:

Video:Consumer Electronics Association: [ce.org]
DVD Software Sales Benefit:
Although movie-ticket sales fell one percent to $9.2 billion in 2003, consumer spending on the purchase or rental of video software (VHS tape and DVD) rose 18.2 percent to $22.5 billion, according to DEG. DVD accounted for 72 percent of total home video spending.

Overall Economy: CNN [cnn.com] The economy has expanded at rates exceeding 3 percent for the past six quarters and seems poised to keep growing. The White House last Friday estimated GDP will expand 3-1/2 percent in 2005.

I think the rise in movie profits has more to do with the change in the format from VHS to DVD, all the movie companies are re-releasing all their classic movies onto "special edition" DVD's and thus people are buying them.

however Cd's havent changed format and there's no reason to buy all your old favorites again. Maybe when DVD-A or SACD takes off we'll see a big spike in music sales too.

The RIAA's members can always lean heavily on their customers' consciences to go legit when they download a 128k mp3 from Kazaa, but if they buy a perfect replica of the album they have no reason to suspect that they will buy a legit copy. Almost every pirated copy that is sold is a sale that has to be totally written off. Few customers would probably even know the difference. With file sharing, there is always the hope that the user will go legit.

Quite the contrary. The reason I don't buy any RIAA CDs is because they're total bastards. The thought that my money is contributing to lobbying efforts against both my interests and ideals will give me too way too much of a nagging conscience to ever enjoy the thing I bought.

Perhaps if they stop suing people and lobby for sane copyright laws (like a 14 year term with mandatory registration and repealing the DMCA and all other related legislation) and wait a few years, I might reconsider my boycott, but I

That is one of the most cynical comments I've seen in a long time. Unfortunatly I'd bet it's true. Which meeans that this sad system needs fixing, desperately. Gee I think thats an ongoing theme here. Maybe the geeks are right. Now how do you get the Congresscritters to pay attention?

After looking at IMDB to see who she is, I now need to submit a fix to them.http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0517820/Eviden tly she was born in 1986 (!!!!!) but was somehow in "Another World" (TV Series) in 1964.

This [bbc.co.uk], titled "Music piracy 'does hit CD sales'" seems to contradict the parent (US CD Sales Increase...), yet they are both on BBC. From the piracy article:

The report, for the country's National Bureau of Economic Research, studied the habits of 412 students.

Hmmmm.... they studied the habits of students. Aren't students usually short on money but have broadband on campus? This is hardly a realistic "sampling" of the population, so therefore cannot be taken seriously.

Part of the goal of the RIAA and MPAA is, naturally, to instill fear in those who might KNOWINGLY accept, purchase, download, etc. pirated materials. This creates stigma towards those that do (sort of like anti-smoking ads in the past couple decades).

This affects the demand for pirated materials which in turns lowers the economic viability for pirates.

The real issue for the RIAA / MPAA is getting all the "not sure if it's really wrong, I do it sometimes, I still buy occasional CDs and DVDs but like to try them" crowd over to the "It's wrong." view. Until they can do that, no amount of efforts will slow piracy down because so many people are doing it, and OK with doing it, that there is a serious strength in numbers.

The crux of the matter is, and will always be, people give their money to companies for often irrational reasons. If more people contributed to artists and things they liked and enjoyed directly, we wouldn't need oppressive middle-men grasping at straws to retain their distribution powers.

I love these articles because they are so misleading. I don't believe there is a strong correllation between sales and piracy. Sales are higher because the economy is doing better. Could they be even higher if there were no pirating? Perhaps, but I would consider it a small subset of people who would have bought something but didn't. Most people downloading stuff would never have bought it in the first place. If the record label lowered their prices that would also increase sales. Thus lower prices == piracy.;)

The fundamental flaw is that in order to exaggerate their losses they come up with absurd calculations like loss = num_files_shared_last_year * retail_price. That is absurd.

I was watching C-SPAN last night and saw the confirmation hearing of U.S. President Bush's new Commerce Secretary. He was asked by Sen Gordon Smith (R-OR) how he would handle the copyright violations and IP issues that are crippling our innovative entrepreneurial spirit. I believe thre new Commerce Sec nominee has been CEO of Kellogg company. Wasn't that the company who was price-fixing cereal some time ago? Does anyone remember?

I just got back from a trip to South-East Asia, and in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos it was rediculous how every single music store sold bootleg CDs. Mostly stuff downloaded from the net (lots of 'best of' with tons of typos), but in high-end/high-quality cases. Especially the stuff I saw in Louang-Prabang (Laos). They were dirt cheap, $2-$5, and I heard they were even cheaper in VietNam, although I didn't make it out there.
If you want even more flagrant copyright violations, when I had satelite tv in Cambodia they were playing Swordfish on one of the channels and it was the exact same DivX screener that I'd downloaded when it first came out in theatres...with the same animated logo scrolling across the top right and everything. How crazy is that?

It changed, no doubt. The effects of that change were not felt by the economy for several months. There is always a lag time for the effects to show up after any event, good or bad. The events of 9/11 were so big that the effect came sooner than normal. I think it's because our national confidence was hit hard. That is a very difficult thing to repair. Truly, as a Nation, we are just now getting it back.

Any President is stuck with the previous administrations economy for 2 - 3 years. If he made changes dur

I have been thinking a bit about the economics of piracy lately. Anyone who knows a bit/lot;) about economics, please comment.

Now, when were talking about digital media, the price to reproduce the good is very close to 0. So we can think of the song/movie/whatever information as being free to reporduce. Now, the RIAA/whoever sets the price of the song/movie to something that is much higher than 0, causing a price floor. If I remember correctly, in my micro-economics class, the teacher said that when you introduce a price floor, black markets emerge. Does this "justify" the online piracy or at least explain in economic terms why it exists?

... piracy is good for the industry to some degree, as it brings to mind works that might then be bought. Otherwise its out of mind...

How do I know this?

Its simple, back in teh napster days beginnings a co worker had put together some 80's popular song CD and many ofthe works I liked and thought of getting a copy from him, that I might better be able to find the albums at the record store... something for the sales clerks to hear and help me with..

It's now clear and obvious (as it always was in spite of the FUD), that the intent of the music and motion picture industry (and the larger media conglomerates that own and manage them) has never been to prevent piracy. In fact it's not even about maximizing profits.

The behavior is perfectly consistent with the abuses against all IP being waged by corporate entities and their legal minions, in the pitched battle to own, control, restrict, and monopolize all human knowlege, invention, and the freedom to create. In a world that has substantively shifted to an information economy, the owner and controller of all IP is king.

We're all quick becoming pawns in a war between human freedom and self determination, and corporate design. The science of shaping opinion, controlling the masses, and disinforming entire nations for fun and profit is run riot directly over the ethical and social designs of our forefathers.
We are confronted with the conundrum of the successful operation that kills the patient, and in this scenario, you and I are the patient. Either, collectively as a people, we get some backbone, and a whole lot more intelligence, or we can expect to obsolete ourselves in the next several decades.

This is simply one more expression of our own ignorance, the worst of our animal nature, run amock. The beast that blindly grabs for the reins of all human enterprise is without foresight, mind numbingly stupid, infinitely self absorbed, and manned by men with the conscience of politicians. It's up to us (that would be not only the person writing these words, but also the people reading these words), to lay down new laws, build new barriers to barbarism, and set the stage for the next 200 years of human development. The alternative, is a furture shaped a lot like the fossil record for all of us naked apes.

Oh, you mean the guys on the street corners selling the CDs pressed in the large CD factories in SE Asia?

If Pirated CD sales (from large scale CD factories, not burned copies, if you read the article) are becoming bigger than legal CD sales, maybe P2P isn't quite as big of a problem as 21 large scale factories in Russia and many more in SE Asia supplying the rest of the world...

I wonder if Congress ever bothers to look at SEC filings. It'd clear up an awful lot of this mess, as all the members of the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA are publicly traded companies, and intentionally misleading filings to the SEC are quite illegal.

Soon, the CDs at the mall will all cost over $20, and have so much DRM crap on them you will hardly be able to play them. You won't be able to rip them to an MP3 player either. The CDs at the flea market will cost $5, will play in any device, and can be ripped to an MP3 player easily. Guess which ones kids will buy? Dontbuycds.org predicted this. [dontbuycds.org]

People like to collect tangible things, but don't like to be ripped off. The labels that make up the RIAA need to think about that.

The reason they aren't going after these "real" pirates is because they are in nations who's legal systems have no incentive to stop the flow of pirated American, European and Japanese media.

At the least, they can try to stop the sale of these goods in the US. In New York, it's not at all uncommon for there to be someone on a street corner with a table set up selling lots of pirated dvd's and cd's. I've been eating in a pizzeria and had a guy come in and go table to table offering pirates dvd's and cd's.

But by going after little Susie or gramma they can make the claim that they're doing something about piracy...

The real question is what are they doing about music quality. Inundation of Britany Spears and the Backstreet boys have made me care much than less.

I have not bought a CD in 2 years. I HAVE, however, downloaded iTunes entire albums and countless singles. There's no point when I'm just going to put it in my mp3 collection anyway so that it's portable.

All non-land owners are theives. They expect to live off of the hard work of others, they expect their health care to be paid for, they expect money when they retire, they expect a whole lot of stuff which isn't due them. About the only thing they are good for is cleaning up crap and building buildings. We should just build jails and keep them all there when they aren't being used to build up our property.

Not exactly, hell, it's not even a good troll but I'll play anyways. Non property owners who occupy a

Did you pay for it? No.Do you now have it? Yes.Did you take it without permission? Yes.

Sounds like a textbook case to me.

You can justify your crime all you want, but it still boils down to your decision to deprive someone of potential earnings. They can only afford to create that product (that you pirated) because of the potential to recover their investment.

It's one thing to not understand this. It's another thing to take issue with the word "theft" simply because you're not physically depriving anyone

So where is the line drawn when it comes to choosing between someone's earnings and the greater good?
At aristry (for example music)?
At mathematical knowledge (for example computer programs)?
Maybe at a cure for cancer?

And even more importantly; who draws that line?
I am not saying the answer is set in stone, and I am not saying artistic works should be out of the author's control - I am trying to distinguis thieves from something else.

The current system to provide incentives for artists to create works is copyright. If you think copyright is being abused because the term is too long then fine. Go back to the original term, give the benefit of the doubt consider they renewed it and P2P Huey Lewis and the News and Disco Duck. Put you name behind it. Actually commit civil disobedience. But leave U2's Verigo alone. You never had any rights to it no matter how you twist history.

That's a meaningless statement. If I went out and killed 10 people I'd be depriving hundreds or thousands of businesses "potential earnings" of the money those victims would never get to spend. But that is not the crime I would've committed. Potential earnings are irrelevant. Depriving actual earnings is what matters.

It's yet another to understand all of this and still believe that you're not doing anything wrong.

Now some non-zero percentage of people who justify copyright infringement by saying "I wouldn't have bought it anyway" are not being honest. There are actual earnings being deprived in that case. But it is also true that some of those people are being honest, and they have not cost the copyright holder any earnings, potential or actual. In that case I can't see much harm in the crime. It's still a crime, but then so is speeding, so is parking illegally. I think it's important to keep some perspective of just what harm is being done, but it's difficult when the media industries insist of obviously flawed approaches such as equating every illegal copy to a lost sale.

Did you pay for it? No.
Do you now have it? Yes.
Did you take it without permission? Yes.
So anything you get for free is stealing. I can think of a lot of examples where this is not the case. Say I recorded a show off CBS. I would still answer the same to all three of your questions.

Hate you break you out of your little black and white world there, but when you talk about copyright it is just as infringing to forward an email without permission as it is to download a song, singing "Happy Birthday" in public is legally actionable and girl scouts pay a fee every year to sing campfire songs together. In the real copyright world it is just as infringing for me to make duplicates of my parents wedding pictures or to copy a photo out of my high school year book. In the real copyright world my four year olds scribbles are instantly copyrighted and her preschool teacher better have permission before she duplicates them. I bet you personally have infringed copyright hundreds of times in 2004, but because you disapprove of the way I do it, I'm a theif and a pirate.

Tell you what. If they come up with a copyright system that makes any sense, then I'll respect it.

You can justify your crime all you want, but it still boils down to your decision to deprive someone of potential earnings."

This statement, right here, is exactly where the gray area is residing. Whether or not potential earnings were lost. There are some out there who are doing exactly that. Downloading music in lieu of buying it. There are some who are downloading music because they already have the CD and want an MP3 version of it. There are some out there that are simply trying to find new music

Sorry to "take issue with the word 'theft'", but it is significant, both in a legal and moral sense. Legally, theft is defined as taking something with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of it, therefore downloading music is not theft. It is copyright infringement, which is a very different legal concept.

Whether or not downloading music actually deprives the record companies of potential earnings is also far less clear than they would have us believe. It is only deprivi

Did you pay for it? No.
Do you now have it? Yes.
Did you take it without permission? Yes.

Did you see the sign? Yes.Did you understand the sign? Yes.Did you drink from the "Whites Only" water fountain? Yes.

It's yet another to understand all of this and still believe that you're not doing anything wrong.

Yeah, that's called civil disobedience. Happy Birthday to You [songfacts.com] should be public domain by now. Sharing copyrighted files without making a profit only became illegal seven years ago when the No Electronic Theft Act was signed into law. By comparison, prohibition lasted 14 years.

Don your Elliot Ness attire. Keep busting those average Joes. Personally, I hope your kind stays the course. I hope RIAA legal activity mushrooms. Once you piss off enough regular people, this becomes a campaign issue and the majority is clearly not on your side. Go RIAA GO!:-)

The copyright infringement we're talking about here is not civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is not just the act of non-violently disobeying unjust laws. True civil disobedience also requires that you break the law publicly and accept the resulting legal consequences. People who practice civil disobedience usually call attention to themselves breaking the law and insist that law enforcement arrest them and enforce the unjust law. When people are punished for breaking an obviously immoral law, the theory goes, the government and/or society will be shamed into changing it.

If the law is broken secretly or the lawbreaker attempts to get out of the punishment, the powerful moral logic of civil disobedience breaks down. It becomes easy to accuse the protester of breaking the law just for personal gain rather than for the greater good. If he or she breaks the law openly from the beginning and requests enforcement of the unjust law, he or she is immunized from this line of attack.

If you want to practice civil disobedience against current copyright law, you should copy some tracks (like Happy Birthday) that you believe you have a moral right to own and you should alert the authorities and the media. Force the RIAA and the FBI to arrest you. Accept the ridiculous fines and jail terms that come with the crime, and thereby show everyone the ludicrous and immoral nature of the law.

Don't, however, copy 100GB of songs off of P2P networks secretly and call it civil disobedience. It's not. It's just lawbreaking.

What if persons C through ZZZZZZZZ also duplicate this sandwich, and they are no longer hungry? Should the potential earnings of A (who wanted to sell sandwiches based on his secret recipy) still oughtweigh the fact that thousands of rather oddly named people are no longer hungry?

say I download a madonna song... It's worth the 3 seconds it will take me to click on the link, that I saw browsing for another song, to get it and listen to it once, but its not worth 99 cents on itunes... if I had to pay 99 cents, there is no way I would get it...

But on iTunes they have extremely high quality previews at a reasonable length that allow you to determine whether or not you'd want to spend 99cents. You're piracy is still wrong.

So, basically, what you're saying is this: You think that you have the right to determine whether or not you should pay for someone else's IP, AFTER you've already garnered the benefit of it? Or, are you saying that you think that you have the right to benefit from it for free, because you think that it is crap?

Ah, I get it - either stance is in strict accordance with the beliefs of the pro-piracy (Whoops, I'm sorry: Pro-copyright infringement - I need to learn to